Absolutely! Which is an excellent argument against the supposition that He has done so, in the Bible or anywhere else. Therefore, we are relegated to relying on what we can divine from the descriptions in the Bible - Which, by your logic, will not be at all clear or precise, as we cannot know the mind of God, nor expect him to explain everything. Therefore we must combine this with what we can learn about the natural world, based on the scientific method (as it is the best way we've found so far to figure things out) and using our God-given talents in doing so.
The operative word in my statement was exhasusively. God does and has explained His workings, that is not in dispute. None of those workings can be exhaustively explained. What we do not have liscense to do is attempt to explain away something based on questionable literary techniques, when we are by definition, the ones who are limited!
Third, if the "metaphor" that God uses is contradicted by "scientific inquiry", it then makes the entirety of God's special revelation to us unreliable, therby calling into question the character of God, therby presenting a contradiction with the defined attributes of deity, therby disproving God's existence.
I'm certainly not questioning God's existence, and anyway that can't be disproven.
Let me ease your mind on this point, and reduce the scope of the argument at the same time. It has always been bad logic to attempt to prove a negative (i.e., that God does not exist). That is the reason that our Judicial system (as opposed to the Napolenic system) places burdon of proof on the accuser.
Since, as you say, God has never explained to us the full details of his Creation, and we have only accounts written and edited by men to understand it by, if we find that our interpretation of those accounts does not jibe with scientific inquiry, that hardly means that we need doubt God's special revelation to us - That is not what's unreliable. It's the people who wrote down and edited what we read, and our own interpretations, that must clearly be at fault, since we agree that God is perfect, and we are not. The metaphors we refer to are man-made.
Finally, we have reached the majour area of disagreement. i will spare you the standard defense of the bible, as time and space constraints would make it rather difficult and clumsy at best. That is a subject that is best left for another thread. At any rate, i do not need to go into a defense of the reliability of scripture to make my point. You have, inadvertently, confirmed the itiliacised portion of my comments above.
Forgive me, but i find your statement to be contradictory. Let us examine it in detail.
we have only accounts written and edited by men to understand it by,The statment implies (by use of the words "only accounts") that God's revelation is either partial, erronious, within "added" material, made up out of whole cloth, or complete and accurate as written.
if we find that our interpretation of those accounts does not jibe with scientific inquiry, that hardly means that we need doubt God's special revelation to us - That is not what's unreliable.
Based on the account given above, it is in fact, a possibility to be considered! We are lead to the possibility that either scientific inquiry is incorrect, our interpretation is incorrect, or the record of scripture is incorrect. This is a contradiction of your premise that we need not doubt God's special revelation.
It's the people who wrote down and edited what we read, and our own interpretations, that must clearly be at fault, since we agree that God is perfect, and we are not. The metaphors we refer to are man-made.
In other words, you eliminate the possibility that scientific inquiry might be erronious!, it becomes "transmission of special revelation", or our interpretive process. It seems that you are actually begging the question here, as well as offering a limited alternative falacy.
i see no need to respond to the rest of the arguments on this post, since we have, in my humble opinion, found the central area of disagreement, and all else is just fluff.
i have no basis what-so-ever to question your sincerity, and do not so do. i would urge you to look into your position and address these aforementioned inconsistencies in it, and come up with a better model. This seems a rational course. Thank you for you kindness, time and patience.
Regards,
CDL
Excellent - So we agree that the explanations we have of God's works are necessarily incomplete.
What we do not have liscense to do is attempt to explain away something based on questionable literary techniques,
Metaphor is a questionable literary technique? :)
when we are by definition, the ones who are limited!
Again, we agree. Man is limited, and imperfect - And since it is man's interpretation of the Word of God that we see in the Bible, as men were its authors, the ones who put pen (quill?) to paper and recorded and edited the message, we must consider the end results carefully, keeping this in mind.
Let me ease your mind on this point, and reduce the scope of the argument at the same time. It has always been bad logic to attempt to prove a negative (i.e., that God does not exist). That is the reason that our Judicial system (as opposed to the Napolenic system) places burdon of proof on the accuser.
It's not even bad logic - It can't be done :) Likewise, we can't prove a positive either, scientifically speaking, we can only say that we have yet to find a test to challenge a particular theory.
We agree here, I just want to put everyone else's minds at ease that scientific inquiry cannot disprove the existence of God, and therefore we need not feel threatened by it, because even if some scientist argues that they've done so, we know that they're full of it :) I say this because I do think that some folks find the directions sciences sometimes takes, and the implications, relevant to religious dogma (which is distinct from religious faith, that being unassailable), threatening, and I just want to make the point that it need not be so, that science is not "out to get" religion, just as religion is not "out to get" science.
You have, inadvertently, confirmed the itiliacised portion of my comments above.
Interesting... Let's see:
Forgive me, but i find your statement to be contradictory. Let us examine it in detail.
we have only accounts written and edited by men to understand it by,
The statment implies (by use of the words "only accounts") that God's revelation is either partial, erronious, within "added" material, made up out of whole cloth, or complete and accurate as written.
Not exactly. It implies that our only understanding of God's revelations comes through the written words of mortal men (i.e. not from God himself putting it directly on the page; for this he chose a vehicle, it was man, and man is imperfect). I'm questioning the perfection of man's account of the revelation, not the revelation itself.
It's like playing the telephone game, if you ever played that when you were a kid - Where one person says something to another, and another, and another, and by the time you get from the original message to the final one, you end up with something that is very different from the original. This implies no judgement, vis-a-vis the original, only that the end result isn't the original message. Thankfully, this effect may be somewhat less extreme than that in real life, but we ignore it at our peril.
if we find that our interpretation of those accounts does not jibe with scientific inquiry, that hardly means that we need doubt God's special revelation to us - That is not what's unreliable.
Based on the account given above, it is in fact, a possibility to be considered! We are lead to the possibility that either scientific inquiry is incorrect, our interpretation is incorrect, or the record of scripture is incorrect.
Right. To expand on those possibilities:
So we agree that it is possible that one or more of the above statements is true - No problem.
This is a contradiction of your premise that we need not doubt God's special revelation.
Not really :) God's message was, by definition, perfect. The men it was given to were, by definition, imperfect. I'm simply arguing for a recognition that we cannot expect a perfect product from such a process. The original message is not in doubt - But that's not what we're getting. What we're getting is man's best attempts to write down and edit and make understandable that message, which, as we agreed previously, is anyway necessarily incomplete, in human terms. Hopefully this clears things up.
In other words, you eliminate the possibility that scientific inquiry might be erronious!, it becomes "transmission of special revelation", or our interpretive process. It seems that you are actually begging the question here, as well as offering a limited alternative falacy.
I'm sorry if it seems that way - It was never my intention to do so, as we both know that the results of scientific inquiry, like all of man's creations, are necessarily imperfect - It's a good thing, too, or I'd be out of a job :)
It's certainly possible that the first of my hyphenated statements is true. I will not deny that - It is possible that, as indicated in a literal reading of the Bible, the earth is flat and has four corners and the sun goes around it, and the heavens above are full of water, held back by floodgates, etc., etc., and that all evidence to the contrary is false.
Is that our most reasonable explanation?
Thanks for writing!
DFS